NASCAR centerpiece: The long and short of it

Monday

May 24, 2010 at 12:01 AMMay 24, 2010 at 3:36 PM

The Coke 600: Same drivers, same track – different race

Rob Sneddon

Forget everything that happened last Saturday night. Although held on the same track, with most of the same drivers, Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway is a completely different animal than the All-Star Race, in which Kurt Busch’s victory was overshadowed by the fireworks between Busch’s younger brother Kyle and Kyle’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin. Here’s why.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint

From the midweek Pit Crew Challenge, which determines the location of pit stalls, to the 10-minute break before the final 10-lap dash, the All-Star Race is a departure from the norm. “We changed a good bit,” Kurt Busch’s crew chief, Steve Addington, said of the work his crew did during last Saturday’s final “intermission.” The 10-minute break allowed Addington ample time to dial in Busch’s car, which had been terrible in the previous segment, for the final 10-lap dash. “It was shock adjustments, some bump-stop adjustments. ... We just made changes like we would in practice, and had time to do it on that 10-minute break.”

Crew chiefs have no such luxury in the 600, which takes the 500-mile format and extends it by 20 percent.

“In the 600 you’ve obviously got to go full fuel runs,” said Mark Martin’s crew chief, Alan Gustafson. “When you make a full fuel run, you’ve got to start out free. You typically just build tighter and tighter and tighter, and you have to start pretty free to balance that out. You give up a little bit in the beginning to get to the middle and the end.”

To further complicate the equation, the 600 starts in daylight and ends in darkness.

“The transitions through the night make it difficult also,” Gustafson said.

Winning isn’t everything

Whether Hamlin would have slammed the door on Kyle Busch in a points race is hard to say. What isn’t hard to say is that Jimmie Johnson would not have spun himself out of a potential top-five finish in an all-out effort to win – which is what happened last Saturday.

“I said, ‘The hell with it. It’s the All-Star Race,’” Johnson said. “Kept my foot to the floor and hoped that I made it off the turn. I didn’t. It turned around on me.”

Expect Johnson, and every other driver, to revert to a more conservative mode on Sunday night.

“It’s going to be a long race and the racetrack is going to get rubbered up and get slick,” Addington said. “We came with a totally different package (for the All-Star Race). We called it a little bit of a science project.”

Still, the All-Star Race allowed teams to learn something about the handling characteristics of this year’s spoiler package at Charlotte.

“Obviously, it is the same track, so it’s really valuable information that you’re going to use for the 600,” Gustafson said.

And then there are the intangibles.

“Momentum is a big thing in this sport,” said Martin Truex Jr., who won last Saturday’s Sprint Showdown to qualify for the All-Star Race, then finished second behind Kurt Busch in the main event. “You see it all the time. So we’re looking forward to the 600. I think we’ll have a good car.”

Busch hopes to ride the momentum, too. He’s in position to become the seventh driver to win the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600 in the same season.

“We feel very comfortable going into the 600,” Busch said. “We just have to pace ourselves.”

Easier said than done.

ONE TO WATCH: David Reutimann

WHY HE MATTERS: He’s the defending Coca-Cola 600 champion.

WHAT HE SAYS: “We haven’t had a whole lot to smile about all year.”

WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY: Finished 19t in his first All-Star Race after a late wreck.

NEXT RACE Coca-Cola 600, Charlotte Motor Speedway

THE LOWDOWN It was inevitable. Take Kyle Busch, Sprint Cup’s perennial bad boy. Team him up with Denny Hamlin, a hard-nosed driver who’s been involved in two recent episodes of “Have at it, boys” payback. Put them up front in a race in which points mean nothing. Could the All-Star Race have ended any other way for Joe Gibbs Racing? The JGR teammates now have to get through 600 long miles at the same track. “I’m sure they’ll work it out,” says the third JGR driver, Joey Logano. It should be fun to watch them try.

PAST WINNERS

2009 David Reutimann

2008 Kasey Kahne

2007 Casey Mears

2006 Kasey Kahne

2005 Jimmie Johnson

ABOUT Charlotte

TRACK: Charlotte Motor Speedway (Concord, N.C.), 1.5-mile paved oval

RACE LENGTH: 400 laps, 600 miles

FIRST RACE: 1960

SERIES: NASCAR Sprint Cup

Quote of note

“It's like the sea parted for us there when the 18 and 11 got together.” – Kurt Busch’s crew chief, Steve Addington, on the late All-Star Race crash that took out JGR teammates Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch and opened the door for Kurt Busch to win.

Where to watch

Sunday’s pre-race show on Fox starts at 5 EDT, followed by race coverage at 6:00.

UP TO SPEED

Charlotte’s multiple personalities

The Coca-Cola 600 is not only different from the All-Star Race, it’s different from the Bank of America 500 held at Charlotte Motor Speedway in October. With a handful of exceptions (including Kevin Harvick and Kasey Kahne whose average finishes between May and October vary by just 0.2 spots), Sprint Cup drivers tend to run either much better, or much worse, at Charlotte in the spring 600 than in the fall 500. Defending 600 winner David Reutimann’s average finish is a full 19 spots better in May than in October, while Clint Bowyer’s average May finish is 16.5 spots worse (see chart).

The fast (food) setup

How does the new Nationwide series car handle? Carl Edwards offered a unique description after a test session at Daytona. Edwards likened it to “when you were a kid, and you’d pull your front-wheel drive car up on some trays, like at a local drive-through restaurant, and then you set the emergency brake and you drive around the parking lot with the rear on the trays and slide around. I don’t know if anybody else has ever done that, but that's kind of what it feels like. It’s pretty wild.”

Milestone

This season marks the 50th anniversary of Charlotte Motor Speedway, which held the first World 600 on June 19, 1960. Joe Lee Johnson won by four laps, in a race that took 5½ hours. A more famous Johnson, Junior, was disqualified for cutting across the grass to reach the pits, as were Lee Petty and Richard Petty, among others.